Saturday, December 19, 2009

About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters; how well, they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or justwalking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horseScratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W. H. Auden

For some reason, every online text of the poem I saw lacked a capital at the beginning of the final line; having checked the print version in my copies of both Auden's Collected Poems and his Selected Poems, this seems like a repeated mistake. So I fixed it.

(To be honest, I've never liked the painting nearly as much as the poem. But I guess at the end of the day I'm a word person. (Also, I've never seen the original; perhaps it just doesn't come through in the crappy web reproductions.) Interestingly, according to the painting's wikipedia page's reporting of a scholarly article, recent technical analysis indicates that the extant one seems to be a copy of a Bruegel and not the original work.)

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The justifiable frustration that many liberals feel at the filibuster -- which is allowing the remnant of a failed political movement to hobble the implementation of its political successor's agenda (which will then allow them to claim, disingenuously, that the replacement failed and that they ought to be allowed to try again) -- has from time to time spilled over into frustration with the Senate itself. Thus a thoughtful liberal writer like Henrik Hertzberg offered a "prayer" that "the number of Americans who realize that more of our problems stem from structure (especially the Senate, and most especially the filibuster) than from politicians’ lack of moral fiber will reach the cusp of a tipping point" -- identifying the Senate itself, not its rules, as the problem.

Like the frustration with the filibuster, frustration with the Senate as a whole is quite justifiable: the Senate is, as has been oft-noted, a counter-majoritarian institution, added to the constitution for all sorts of reasons that would never pass muster today, in part as a check upon the part of the country that some founders feared might some day try to limit or even abolish slavery. It's a bit of an embarrassment, and there are solid reasons for arguing that it ought to be abolished.

But can it be? Article 5 of the U. S. Constitution, which governs the amendment process, makes the fact that "that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate" the one (remaining*) unamendable aspect of the Constitution. Now, you could argue that technically no state would be deprived of equal suffrage in the Senate if the Senate were abolished; all states would have equal suffrage in it, i.e. none. It's an argument I doubt would pass muster, however. (It's unclear who would rule on the issue -- the Supreme Court, perhaps, but in what context? -- but whoever did, it's not an argument that would carry much weight.) Now, I've always read that clause as implying that an amendment changing the structure of (or abolishing) the Senate would be valid if it were unanimously ratified by all the states -- but even assuming this is right, it seems impossible in any practical sense.

So the Senate is a permanent part of our Constitution, until the Sun goes nova?

Well, maybe not. Here's a thought.

Perhaps the Senate couldn't be constitutionally abolished. But could it be constitutionally turned into the equivalent of the House of Lords? That is, made a rubber-stamp body of no real importance?

I don't see why not, legally speaking. (Of course, IANAL.) Presumably a series of amendments could do this. One might take all specialized functions of the senate (e.g. ratification of judges and treaties) and give them instead to the house. Another might ensure that the Senate's vote is a mere formality (e.g. require that, while a majority of the house would be required to pass legislation, any legislation that comes before the Senate can pass with a minority (of 1/3, say), and that they can't decide not to vote on it; alternatively, say that any bill which gets a 60% majority in the house can go to the President with no action by the Senate). A third might redefine the electoral college to give each state the number of votes of its House delegation (with none for the senate). And so forth. That sort of thing.

So here's my question: would this be legal? It would, I suppose, violate the spirit if not the letter of the "unamendable" stipulation -- but not quite as blatantly as simply operating on an "equal in having no suffrage" theory, and it seems that it might well fly. Certainly many sub-parts of such a plan -- e.g. making judges and treaties ratified by the House not the Senate, changing the electoral college, etc. -- are actually quite defensible; perhaps enough of these put together would do the trick.

So could we turn the Senate into the House of Lords?

-- It's an idle thought, of course: passing this would be, practically speaking, nearly as (if not as) difficult as changing the Senate to a simple majoritarian institution, comparable to the House. It would presumably require the states to call a constitutional convention (assuming the Senate is not going to vote itself into being a rubber stamp) for the purpose of amending the constitution in this way, and then get these amendments ratified, etc.

Still, it's an interesting parlor game. Any constitutional scholars in the house who want to weigh in here?

In the meantime, let's get rid of the filibuster, eh?

________________________* The one other unamendable bit -- the notion that the slave trade couldn't be prohibited before 1808 -- is now moot, since that year has passed.

As is my personal Thanksgiving tradition, I would like to give thanks to you, Noble Reader, for reading. I am thankful that you have dropped by; I hope you will come back again.

And this year, I am additionally pausing to be thankful that George W. Bush is no longer the President of my country. A good day to remember that, for all the political frustrations and problems of the present moment, despite all my disappointments with and the manifest inadequacies of our current leadership (and they are many), things have been, quite recently, much, much worse. So thank goodness for that.

Have a joyful Thanksgiving, one and all, however (and whether) you celebrate it, and whomever (and however) you give thanks.

Monday, November 23, 2009

I hesitated before (re) posting this, since the views expressed in these signs are not my own (although not entirely divorced from my own either). I wouldn't myself say what these two activists are saying. So I don't want to give the impression that I'm posting this to merely, or simply, agree with it.

But I found the photograph very striking, and couldn't get it out of my head. And I think that the message in these signs points to an aspect of the Israel/Palestine situation which is important and under-recognized, a moral dimension which -- along with others -- must be fully absorbed in any just approach to the situation. So I pass it along, not in complete disagreement, not in complete agreement, but as something worth seeing: an important perspective which (partially, over-simplistically) captures an important aspect of the situation.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

...I have my own views on the subject, of course. Surprisingly strong opinions, really, given that it's not an issue that's really directly connected to me in any way. But in addition to views on the subject, I also have meta-views on my views on this subject. Which is to say, I am also strongly of the opinion that anyone seeking any information on this topic would be crazy to ask me, and foolish to listen to what I had to say if they heard it. However strongly I may feel about the subject, I am also clearly not someone with a good evidentiary basis for considering the topic, nor someone who is all that interesting or insightful or even reliable on these sorts of matters.

And why would you trust my evaluations on the topic but not on the meta-topic? Either I am trustworthy, in which case my views on the meta-topic should prevent you from considering my views; or I am not, in which case the entire set should be thrown out. (And yes, I do have meta-meta-views that my meta views are reliable.)

Friday, November 13, 2009

Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Do evildoers prosper?Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins. But thou, O Lord, knowest me: thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. Jeremiah asks God to drag away his enemies like "sheep for the slaughter."How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said, He shall not see our last end....Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart.

THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are againWith fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Hey there mister can you tell meWhat happened to the seeds I've sownCan you give me a reason, sir, as to why they've never grownThey've just blown around from town to townBack out on these fieldsWhere they fall from my handBack into the dirt of this hard land

Well me and my sisterFrom Germantown we did rideWe made our bed, sirFrom the rock on the mountainsideWe been blowin' around from town to townLookin' for a place to standWhere the sun burst through the clouds and fall like a circleA circle of fire down on this hard land

Now even the rain it don't come 'roundDon't come 'round here no moreAnd the only sound at night's the windSlammin' the back porch doorYeah it stirs you up like it wants to blow you downTwistin' and churnin' up the sandLeavin' all them scarecrows lyin' facedownIn the dirt of this hard land

From a building up on the hillI can hear a tape deck blastin' "Home on the Range"I can hear them Bar-M choppersSweepin' low across the plainsIt's me and you, Frank, we're lookin' for lost cattleOur hooves twistin' and churnin' up the sandWe're ridin' in the whirlwind searchin' for lost treasureWay down south of the Rio GrandeWe're ridin' 'cross that river in the moonlightUp onto the banks of this hard land

Hey, Frank, won't you pack your bagsAnd meet me tonight down at Liberty HallJust one kiss from you, my brotherAnd we'll ride until we fallWell sleep in the fieldsWe'll sleep by the riversAnd in the morning we'll make a planWell if you can't make it stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive if you canAnd meet me in a dream of this hard land

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The world Parker actually wants... is merely a world in which one can walk down an average city street and not be confronted by a 4-year-old in a "Future Porn Star" T-shirt, a world in which most women do not own stripper poles, a world in which most people do not know that sex-equity experts even exist.

I think Kathleen Parker's in luck. I myself, in a lifetime of walking down city streets, have never see a 4-year-old (nor a child of any age) wearing a "future porn star" T-shirt; despite having not looked into the matter, I feel quite certain that most women do not, in fact, own stripper poles (I don't know of anyone who does); and I had remained blissfully unaware of sex-equity experts until I had the misfortune of reading Kathleen Parker sound off about the concept in the above-linked profile. While I admit that my experience may not be typical, my hunch is that Parker's living in her own little utopia here.

I admit, however, that the second list of demands is slightly more problematic:

[The world Parker actually wants is] a world in which most people don't say "vagina" in polite conversation, vice presidents are expected to know something about the country that elected them, abortion is stigmatized but not illegal, and racial profiling is permitted but not celebrated.

Abortion is -- sadly -- terribly stigmatized in this country, but despite recent efforts by our house of representatives, is not quite yet illegal. So Parker's in luck there. On the other fronts, I don't know. Certainly the current vice president knows something about our country -- as did the previous one, although that "something" did not apparently include anything about its constitution nor its ideals. And while I myself personally have no idea how widely "vagina" is said in polite conversation, I suspect that saying it is (like abortion) sadly stigmatized,* so I think Parker's currently safe there too.

But racial profiling is, I have to inform her, not permitted. And based on the evidence of the above linked-profile, it is, indeed, "celebrated" -- at least by "the most widely syndicated female columnist in the nation," Kathleen Parker. So in one respect she has something still to strive for.

_____________________* Obligatory quote:

Maude Lebowski: The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.The Dude: Oh yeah?Maude Lebowski: Yes, they don't like hearing it and find it difficult to say whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.The Dude: Johnson?

When Lieberman ignored the results of his party's primary, and ran as a "Connecticut for Lieberman" candidate against the Democrat, and won, he was allowed to keep his Committee Chair & other perks because we might need his vote some day. (For that matter, most of the establishment democrats (including, to his shame, Obama) failed to campaign for the actual Democrat -- campaigning that might have turned the tide and gotten a real Democrat into this crucial seat -- for the same reason.)

When Lieberman endorsed - and campaigned for - the Republican candidate in the Presidential election, he was allowed to keep his Committee Chair & other perks because we might need his vote some day.

Surely "some day" is now. This is the signature piece of domestic legislation that Obama has been working on, that the Democratic caucus has been working on, that progressives in the U.S. have been struggling for since Harry Truman.

All we need Lieberman to do is not filibuster it. He can vote against it. But we need him to allow a vote by the Senate.

If he won't do that, on this... then it seems to me that there is nothing left to wait for. Toss him out of the caucus. Strip his committee chairmanship and seniority. Do everything you can.

I trust the Democrats to do the right thing here like I trust the Red Sox to prevail in the postseason, but it seems to me this is the time to pull out all the stops. After this, there is nothing left to save the firepower for. (And, if he won't be with us on this -- to this limited extent -- he never will.)

Monday, October 26, 2009

Both introduced and bade goodnight:RoomRed balloonPicture of the cow jumping over the moonThree bears sitting on chairsTwo kittensPair of mittensLittle toy houseYoung mouseCombBrushBowl full of mushQuiet old lady whispering "hush"

Bade goodnight but not introduced:MoonLightClocksSocksNobodyStarsAirNoises everywhere

Saturday, October 24, 2009

If you’re graduating from college this spring, you’ll be sitting around at the age of thirty-five still suffering from the fact that Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, and Kent Conrad decided to make the stimulus bill stingier in order to better bolster their credentials as preening centrists.

By staying, we are significantly improving Afghan human rights, especially for women. This, for me, is the meatiest argument – and the most depressing. The Taliban are indeed one of the vilest forces in the world, imprisoning women in their homes and torturing them for the "crimes" of showing their faces, expressing their sexuality, or being raped. They keep trying to murder my friend Malalai Joya for the "crime" of being elected to parliament on a platform of treating women like human beings not cattle.

But as she told me last month: "Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords." Outside Kabul, vicious Taliban who enforce sharia law have merely been replaced by vicious warlords who enforce sharia law. "The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women," she said. Any Afghan president – Karzai, or his opponents – will only ever in practice be the mayor of Kabul. Beyond is a sea of warlordism, as evil to women as Mullah Omar. That is not a difference worth fighting and dying for.

Click through to read his answer to the other two arguments, the notions that "We need to deprive al-Qa'ida of military bases in Afghanistan, or they will use them to plot attacks against us," and that withdrawing from Afghanistan will reinvigorate Al-Qaida.

As the ghost in the haunted house says to the stupid people who stay anyway in an uncountable number of horror movies: GET OUT.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Rule 34 in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure "...governs the process of discovery, in particular, the production of electronic and tangible evidence as well as the circumstances under which one party to a lawsuit may enter the land of another party for inspection "or other purposes.""

"Other purposes"? Oh my. Anyone for some Rule 34 p0rn?*

(Rule 34 google search brought to you by Gerry Canavan's reminding me of this news about Marge Simpson. GC links to the actual pictures; click through if you're curious. Not that NSFW, really, but definitely NS. Oh, and that link at the head of this paragraph? Goes to the image search. As Scott Eric Kaufman wrote in a different yet equally apt context, "Just remember those are the only eyes God gave you and some images can't be stabbed out of them no matter how hard you try." Sort of covers this whole subject, actually.)

Friday, October 16, 2009

When John Lennon thrice sings, in "A Day in the Life" (from Sgt. Pepper -- and not any of those fancy re-mixes either, just the good old-fashioned CD release from 1987), "I read the news today, oh boy", how are we to understand those last two words? Is it a simple groan, or is it sarcastic glee? What struck me is how both meanings would fit equally well with the rest of the song -- the worldweary overwhelm of Lennon's newsreading.

Indeed, I can't quite make up my mind whether there is in fact any difference between those two options, or whether something said with sufficiently sarcastic glee might as well be a groan.

Perhaps one way to capture the difference -- if there really is one -- would be two possible punctuations of the line:

• Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-building - as the new American way of war.• Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has jettisoned the label “global war on terror’’).• Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for decades.

Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power, for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq - is to preserve the status quo....

If the president assents to McChrystal’s request, he will void his promise of change at least so far as national security policy is concerned.... As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping Americans safe’’ obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial.

I think this puts into words my sense of why I am for deescalation and withdrawal from Afghanistan, as quickly as possible. I don't want the U.S. to be an empire. I want to see us move away from our globe-spanning network of military bases, our quick reliance on the threat of war (and, all too often, on war) as our "number one instrument of diplomacy". I want us not to spend huge sums of money on making weapons. I don't want us engaged in any number of military actions not in response to a direct threat. I want us, in other words, to stand down -- militarily -- unless it's really necessary.

And since no one has articulated why Afghanistan is really necessary -- certainly not from the point of view of American interests, and certainly not in a way consonant with the resources it is taking (and will take) -- we should get out.

Of course, this is a focus on what Afghanistan will mean to us, and to the planet more broadly, and not to the people most directly affected, i.e. those of Afghanistan. This is because I know a fair bit about the U.S., and some about the globe, but very little about Afghanistan. I also think that Americans should make their decisions on these matter on the joint bases of what is best for us, i.e. Americans, and for the planet as a whole, rather than in the interests of any other country -- about which, in any event, we are generally quite ill-equipped to judge. -- Still, I admit that there may be an argument for staying that is made genuinely and convincingly on their behalf -- although given recent politics any such arguments should be, in my view, guilty until proven innocent of being mere pretense for neoconservative (or neoliberal) war mongering and empire building. Imperialists always claim (at least in the modern age) to be acting in the interests of their imperial subjects, but those subjects, oddly enough, rarely see it that way.

So, in the meantime, I'm for trying to wrest America back from its status as an empire and back towards its status as a democratic republic.

Alas, there isn't really a political party that supports this position (the closest you can come is Ron Paul -- and he's odious on lots of other grounds). Our current political debate is more or less divided between insane imperialism (Republicans who want to go to war at the drop of a hat) and sane but still quite imperial imperialism ("centrist" Democrats) -- and Obama is definitely the latter. During the campaign he had mixed messages on this point -- he was able to win because of the space for an anti-Iraq candidate that Hillary Clinton's support of the war had opened up, and the foreign policy people supporting him tended to be Iraq skeptics and otherwise on the somewhat less militaristic side of the spectrum -- but then he brought the hawks on board, appointed Hillary Clinton his Sec of State, and pushed ahead with all the wars and executive power that comes with them. Hoping for much else was fairly far-fetched -- but I hoped for better than we've gotten, and not, I think, for no reason.

Although I must admit I can't bring myself to be as hopeful as Bacevich about there being any possibility other than a decision for more war and the national security state, government of, by and for the military-industrial-political complex. (For more on the "political" angle here, see Greenwald.) I find it almost impossible to imagine the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate choosing anything other than more war -- at the very least, than a continuance of the American empire in all its fetid splendor.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Philip Weiss is reporting that Leila Abu-Saba, who blogged at Dove's Eye View, has died (she had been battling cancer for several years). I never got to meet Leila, but she and I exchanged a number of emails -- I'd begun reading her blog at the time of Israel's 2006 war against Lebanon, and she in turn was quite supportive about the various pieces I wrote about the war at the time. I definitely thought of her as a friend, in that odd shadow way that one is friends with people online that we never get to meet.

She was a passionate advocate for peace, and a fine writer. I am terribly sorry to hear of her untimely death, and my thoughts are with her husband and children.

Rest in peace, Leila. Your voice will be greatly missed.

Update: If anyone out there in the ether finds a link to an obituary about Leila, or (particularly) somewhere where I could write a condolence note to her family, I would be very grateful if you would leave a note in the comments. Thanks.

Friday, October 09, 2009

The especially weird thing about Obama receiving an award for not being GW Bush is that he hasn't actually been doing a very good job of it. As others have pointed out, he's continuing both of Bush's wars, adopting Bush's "surge" tactic for Afghanistan, covering up Bush's torture regime, and continuing Bush's domestic wiretapping.

Surely it ought to be a basic criterion for winning a peace prize that you shouldn’t be currently fighting a war, or at the very least that you shouldn’t be increasing your commitment to a war you’re already fighting?

I'd rather Obama had won it after Congress agreed to substantial cuts in greenhouse gases comparable to what Europe is proposing, after he brought Palestinians and Israelis together to accept a two-state solution, after he got the United States out of Afghanistan and reduced the nuclear arm's threat between Pakistan and India, or after he was well on the way to eliminating the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Any one of these would have been worthy of global praise.... Giving the Peace Prize to the president before any of these goals has been attained only underscores the paradox of Obama at this early stage of his presidency. He has demonstrated mastery in both delivering powerful rhetoric and providing the nation and the world with fresh and important ways of understanding current challenges. But he has not yet delivered. To the contrary, he often seems to hold back from the fight -- temporizing, delaying, or compromising so much that the rhetoric and insight he offers seem strangely disconnected from what he actually does. Yet there's time. He may yet prove to be one of the best presidents this nation has ever had -- worthy not only of the Peace Prize but of every global accolade he could possibly summon. Just not yet.

Years ago, a rug cleaner in LA got an early-morning phone call from Stockholm to inform him that he'd won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Oops, wrong number. The lucky man ended up on the Tonight Show: "I was surprised. I mean, I know I do a darn good job cleaning carpets. I can tell you which chemicals work best for ketchup stains, red wine spills, etc. But the Nobel Prize? I thought, maybe that's a bit excessive." There was an honest man.

In the predawn darkness of 16 October 1987, the phone rang in the Altadena, California, bedroom of Donald Cram, owner of a rug-cleaning business. In a fluting voice, an unknown caller congratulated the sleepy Cram on winning the Nobel Prize. Thinking he recognized the voice of a pal known for practical joking, Cram hung up. But the man with the strange accent called back and insisted that Cram's work on molecular structure had indeed taken science's top honor. That's when the former chemistry major groggily realized that his frustrated caller wanted the Los Angeles area's other Donald Cram, the one who taught at the University of California, (UC) Los Angeles, and had an unlisted phone number. [Link added]

I mean, I think Obama's rhetoric on nuclear reduction is good and all, but he hasn't done much yet.

My first instinct is that giving the prize prospectively -- or, as I've already seen a fewpeoplesuggest, for not being George Bush and/or John McCain -- lessens the value of the prize more than helps Obama or peace. But who knows.

If the prize is being given for not having a lunatic in charge, shouldn't the recipient have been the American electorate rather than Obama?

Update 2: My precise reaction -- that this reads like it was from the Onion -- has been sharedby a largenumber of others. Which leads to the following idea: wouldn't it be funny -- a sort of meta-joke, as well as a news commentary -- if The Onion simply published this story straight? Just buy the rights to the AP version or something and run it as if it was an Onion story. It would be a good joke on the story, I think, as well as a nod to the Onion's own role in our cultural consciousness...

Thursday, October 01, 2009

I have never been back to Crossgates. In a way it is only within the last decade that I have really thought over my schooldays, vividly though their memory has haunted me. Nowadays, I believe, it would make very little impression on me to see the place again, if it still exists. And if I went inside and smelled again the inky, dusty smell of the big schoolroom, the rosiny smell of the chapel, the stagnant smell of the swimming bath and the cold reek of the lavatories, I think I should only feel what one invariably feels in revisiting any scene of childhood: How small everything has grown, and how terrible is the deterioration in myself!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Of course what happened cannot be excused, either legally or ethically.

Right. The crime -- which Harris, as is all-too-common among Polanski's defenders, never mentions -- is that Roman Polanski raped a child. Rape, as has been noted, in three separate ways -- rape because she was too young to consent, rape because she was drugged and unable to consent, and rape because she said no. Polanski plea-bargained to the first of the three in order to avoid trial on the entire set; but it all, y'know, happened. Any one of the three would make it rape.*

So this "cannot be excused" -- including legally. Inexcusable.

Which renders the rest of Harris's op-ed utterly moot. If something cannot be excused, then all the excuses offered in practically every other sentence of the op-ed are besides the point.

(In addition to the Salon story linked above -- which I think is the "if you're only going to read one" for this particular issue -- I also recommend this and this, both via these posts, which also contain more sensible points and relevant links.)

I am frankly really shocked at the numberof people coming forward to defend a man who has admitted the drugging and raping of a 13-year-old-girl. I kinda thought the underlying facts of this case would scare people off. But there are an awful lot of defenders out there.

Of course, I shouldn't be shocked by the number of filmmakers and writers coming forward to defend Polanski; being a great artist has no relation to being a decent person -- exhibit A here being Polanski himself. But I am shocked nevertheless.

(The basic point in regards to the art/morality connection in this case was well put by Scott Lemieux: "...evaluations of Polanski's art should be kept distinct from his crimes, but this cuts both ways -- the fact that he's produced great art shouldn't give him immunity for a severe violent crime.")

And yeah, like a number of others, the obvious connection which occurs to me here is to the war-criminals in the Bush administration. A rapist shouldn't serve his sentence because he's an important filmmaker, or it was decades ago, or it would politicize art; orderers of torture shouldn't be prosecuted because they were important politicians, or we need to look forward not back, or it would politicize politics. Being unable to return to or leave the U.S. (respectively) and having their reputations sullied are sufficient punishment -- at least for those sorts of people.

Now, I believe in grey areas, and that the law is hardly always just. But I would like to think that torture and rape are two of the areas which we can pretty much all agree are, well, inexcusable.

Yet two large crowds have come forward to defend the perpetrators of these crimes. Half of each crowd would be offended to be compared to the other; another large chunk are simultaneous members of both camps. But the common thread here is that people who aren't just the little people should be allowed to get away with torture and rape.

Because being an artist, or being a high-ranking Republican politician, or simply being a member of the well-connected set, are licences to commit any crimes. Even those.

How can people think this way? What leads people to defend these things?

It's Chinatown.

________________* I admit there are grey areas in statutory rape laws -- two kids having consensual sex being the prime example here -- where the law and morality are at odds. Even absent the other factors, this -- a 40-year-old man with a 13-year-old girl -- isn't close. With the other factors, bringing it up would be a joke if it weren't so damn evil.

Update to footnote: Two links to over-thought, excessively analyzed, pretentiously-academic-about-common-subject posts that any reader of this blog should like (you can tell from my adjectives that I'm jealous as hell and wish I'd written 'em). Firstly, this explanation of why the grand jury testimony is important to consider even though it's one-sided and one should normally be wary of such things for precisely that reason; and secondly -- and while they're both good if you read only one read this one -- this post about the meaning of statutory rape, which talks about Wittgenstein, famous cognitive psychology experiments and the sort of intellectual slippage that might cause (some of) Polanski's defenders to defend someone who has committed so vile a crime. Who knew that the route to understanding Polanski's seemingly clueless moral defenders was through Wittgenstein and violations of gricean maxims?

Friday, September 25, 2009

"When she was good,She was very, very good,And when she was bad she was horrid...."

The first episode of the second season of Joss Whedon's tv show Dollhouse aired tonight, although I haven't seen it yet, because it doesn't go up on hulu until tomorrow sometime (and we don't get broadcast tv).

But in case anyone wants to catch up on Season 1 before watching Season 2 I thought I'd outline for you the good parts version. Because, far more than any Whedon show to date, Dollhouse is really uneven.

Hell, even Whedon & the rest of the Dollhouse crew admitted as much in talking up episode 6, saying that that was when they finally got it right -- stopped telling the self-contained and silly stories of the week (possibly pushed on them by the network executives in a highly misguided attempt to make the show accessible rather than good) and started to tell their overall story.

Now, to be clear, I wouldn't particularly recommend Dollhouse to anyone who isn't already a Whedon fan. Why watch the quite flawed Dollhouse when you can go and watch the sublime Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog? -- shows that, while not without flaws, are overall the best TV made this side of The Wire. But if you are already a fan of those shows -- or if for whatever reason you don't want to watch them but want to try Dollhouse -- here's how to do it.

Almost the entire narrative arc of the 13-episode Season 1 was contained in 6 episodes. You can definitely tune in to the first of these episodes and get caught up right away. And if you just watch those 6, you'll be watching a very solid, interesting, thought-provoking show. Those 6 are:

1.06 - Man on the Street1.08 - Needs1.09 - A Spy in the House of Love1.11 - Briar Rose1.12 - Omega1.13 - Epitaph One

Now I'm not saying you won't miss anything watching only those six. To the degree that there was anything good about the bad episodes of Dollhouse, it was the dribs and drabs of the overall story sprinkled about among otherwise mediocre-to-bad stories of the week. But those six are definitely the best, contain the vast portion of the central story -- and certainly are perfectly understandable on their own.

As of right now, four of those six episodes -- all but the first and the last -- are available on hulu for free. But they take down all but the most recent episodes, so tomorrow when they post the first episode of season two they might take down "Needs".Update: Season one is no longer on hulu, but you can by the show for a couple of bucks an episode at itunes or Amazon, or can rent/buy/netflix them on DVD.

("Epitaph One" isn't on hulu because, for various reasons that are too complicated to go into, it was never aired on U.S. tv, although it was or will be aired in most foreign markets; but it is probably the best episode of Season 1 (although it would make no sense without the other five listed) and should definitely not be skipped.)

I think five of those six episodes are very, very good. The one exception is "Omega", the end of the two-parter that was the conclusion as the show aired on U.S. tv. It's good, although in a number of ways it was a bit disappointing. Still worth watching since it is key to the overall story -- and, again, it's pretty good.

So if you haven't watched Dollhouse, and want to try it, watch those six.

The other seven... well, they vary from quite bad episodes with only a few good touches here and there to flawed episodes that have some genuinely good stuff mixed in with the failures. By common consensus, the first five episodes were simply a bad start to the series; the two later ones I am suggesting skipping were the more stand-alone-ish of the good half of the season. If you want to watch a few more episodes, then the ones I would suggest adding in first are those two -- 1.7, "Echoes" and 1.10 "Haunted". Not great, but both have some good stuff in them. If you want to try one of the five misfire episodes that began the show, I think the best of them was 1.4, "Grey Hour", which had some genuinely nice touches. But don't try it first; start with 1.6, "Man on the Street", to see what the show can do when it's good -- and if you're anything less than utterly committed to it (in which case this entire post doesn't really apply to you, does it) then stick to the six above.

As for season two -- who knows. So far the few reviews I've seen have been mostly positive if not overwhelming. If they can stick to the promise of episodes 6, 8, 9, 11 & 12, it should be a very fun show to watch. If they can match the promise of episode 13, "Epitaph One" -- and the only negative comments I've seen from reviewers of it have been expressed fears that they can do anything to match the promises and expectations set up in that fabulous hour of television -- it will be an amazingly fabulous show -- worthy of the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (If not -- well, we'll always have Sunnydale.)

So if you've liked stuff that Whedon's done in the past -- try Dollhouse. It's good, when it's good. But stick to the path. You know what happens to characters who ignore that advice in stories, and it ain't ever pretty.

(PS: I haven't seen the unaired pilot, included on the dvd, which was scrapped for parts which ended up in many of the later shows in the season. But a number of things I've seen indicate that it started the show out at the level of these six -- only to have Whedon, possibly at the urging of Fox executives, back down to the level of the first five before crawling back up. But it's not apparently good to watch except as an outtake, since it went in a different direction than they ultimately went -- it's not part of the same story. Ah well.)

Update for Season Two (first half):

Of the ten episodes (out of 13 total) that have aired as of this writing (December 19, 2009), no less than seven would fit unproblematically onto the list above, i.e. every episode from #4 ("Belonging") on. Starting with episode four they got their act together and have made a solid show (i.e. it took them just long enough to get them canceled -- or, perhaps, it was the fact of cancellation that made them focus and tell the good central story they have to tell and not waste time with silly stand-alones.)

The second and third episodes of the season are solid stand-alones, comparable to the later-season stand-alones of season one -- i.e. good but skipabble. #3, "Belle Chose", is better than #2, "Instinct", if you're only going to see one. But if you're sticking with the main plot, skip both.

The season opener ("Vows") is complicated: unlike any of the season one episodes, it mixes some key (and awesome) overarching plot material with a pretty blah story-of-the-week plot; basically, the B-plot belongs solidly on this list, while the A-plot belongs solidly on the skip-it list. If you want to watch the B-plot, the way to do it is to hone in on any scene with Amy Acker ("Dr. Claire Saunders") while fast-forwarding past any scene with Eliza Dushku ("Echo") -- with the possible exception of the last ten minutes or so. Otherwise, just watch the whole thing and remember I warned you.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

(In reading the below, remember I'm neither a lawyer nor a policymaker nor even one who has read the relevant legal documents; I'm going by a (semi-informed, but distinctly) layman's readings of the news stories about them. If that doesn't interest you, bail now.)

Until 1976, copyrights were good for 56 years -- an automatic 28 with a single optional renewal. In 1976, Congress extended that period -- first to 75 and then later to 95 years (oversimplifying but in essence). This was not only prospective, applying to works copyrighted in 1976 and later, but retroactive, applying to old works too.

But this created an odd situation for those who had sold their copyrights prior to 1976. What they'd sold was copyright as it existed then, i.e. the 56 year term. What to do about the extensions for sold copyrights? Should they belong to the original owner (on the grounds that they only sold the existing copyright of 56 years and not any more), or should they belong to the new purchaser (on the grounds that the purchaser bought the copyright and the extension doesn't affect that)?

(Note that this is also a different legal situation than the one involving DC/Superman/Jerry Siegel's heirs.)

3)

This entire debate is distorted by a broader misconception in our culture about the relation of worth and wealth to merit and effort.

It is a strong cultural myth in our society -- an essential undergirding of one of the two major political philosophies of this country, and an almost-as-important one for the other -- that people who get rich deserved it. They worked hard, or had a good idea, and therefore they made it. Conservatives tend to (implicitly) assume this is the end of the story: if you work hard and/or are smart, you'll get rich; if you're poor, it's your own damn fault. Liberals, in contrast, recognize unfairness and randomness to a degree, so they tend to say that people can work hard and stay poor. But neither side tends to see the fact that wealth is at least a much a matter of chance and luck as it is of merit or effort.

The reason we don't like to see that, of course, is that it upends the supporting intellectual assumptions of most of our society: if the rich are simply lucky, then the enormous favor they receive is unearned and unfair.*

This is never more true than when we are talking about intellectual property.

I'm not (repeat, not) saying that artistic merit has no relation to how well a work does. But it's been extensively argued on theoretical grounds, amply seen throughout history and shown in controlled laboratory studies that merit is, at best, a necessary but not sufficient factor. Harry Potter may have been a good series of children's books -- but there are a lot of other books that are equally good (as I've had children's librarians say to me); J. K. Rowling may have been good, but she was mostly very, very lucky.

However true this is of the success of original works, how much more strongly true is it of intellectual properties** which have success in derivative works!

I won't argue with anyone who tells me Herb Trimpe is unlikely to return to Marvel and create a blockbuster, breakthrough character that generates millions of dollars, no matter what sort of compensation deal is in place.

...which implies that the talent and effort of Herb Trimpe (who was the first man to draw (although he did not create) Wolverine) was a major role in Wolverine's becoming a breakthrough character. This is not because of what Herb Trimpe did or didn't do.*** It's because time and chance -- and broad social forces such as create a market for characters such as Wolverine -- and, above all, fashion are what made Wolverine worth what he's worth today.

The fight that will follow over the ownership of the Fantastic Four isn't quite like a fight over a lottery ticket; but it's far, far closer than anyone is granting in this discussion.

4)

There is a third party to every legal battle over intellectual property, one which has neither lawyers nor lobbyists on its side. Thanks to the recent intellectual growth of the copyleft movement, it has some advocates; but their position is largely based on reason and fairness and the public good, and is therefore extremely weak. But it is the most important party nonetheless.

I speak, of course, of the public.

Intellectual property -- a misnomer, really, since there is no thing to be owned -- is a government-enforced monopoly restricting freedom of speech. It restricts your ability to say what you want to say, in person or print or on film or in comics -- if what you want to say is, for example, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure of the windowpane; I was [REMAINDER DELETED DUE TO DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE]" It equally, and even more indefensibly, to your ability to tell an original story -- if that story is about, for example, Superman or Spiderman.

There are reasons for so limiting speech -- which is why the power to do so is explicitly granted in the Constitution -- but given that it is limiting very basic human rights, the power is moral only insofar as it is necessary to accomplish its stated ends. (Whether or not it is legal is a separate matter.)

5)

The moral case for creators' rights is both essential and irrelevant to the Kirby-copyright issue.

It's irrelevant because neither party has a very good moral (as opposed to legal) claim. On one side we have Kirby's biological heirs; on the other, the corporate descendents of the companies he worked for. Neither set of people had much to do with the effort or talent put into these characters; they are fighting for an inheritance, and like any fight for inheritance they are fighting for things they may have title to but don't in any moral sense particularly deserve.

But it's essential because it was only because of the (perceived) moral rights of creators that copyright was extended in the first place.

If the case before Congress had been that companies wished to extend their intellectual monopolies to make more money from them, then even that bribery-pliant group of sellouts would have a hard time justifying such a vote. So it was all talked up in terms of the struggling, lonely dreamer, hoping to turn his or her talent into a win for his or her heirs.

This was a fiction, of course -- as much of a fiction as the notion that estate taxes hit small farmers rather than wealthy businessmen, and a fiction of the same kind, i.e. a propagandistic one designed to hide the true beneficiaries of public policy. But in terms of the copyright extensions passed in the 1970's, and then again in the 1990's, and then again whenever Mickey Mouse next threatens to go out of copyright, it's an essential one. Without this fiction, the extra value that came from the copyright for years 57 - 95 of an intellectual property simply wouldn't exist -- or would, rather, be held by the public and not by anyone in particular.

This is why you can't say of copyrights what you'd say of, for example, real estate. If you sell a house in a poor neighborhood, and then it becomes trendy, and the owner therefore (through luck) becomes rich, you can't complain that you didn't know its worth when you sold it. But no one seriously doubts (pragmatically if not morally) the perpetual property rights to real estate.****

Whereas the purchasers of these monopolies, which have become valuable only due to chance (and the efforts of thousands, morally and artistically indistinguishable from similar efforts which led nowhere), have any chance of extending them at the expense of the public only by appealing to the moral claim of their creators.

Marvel wants to argue that, for the good of people like Jack Kirby, it must have the right to hold a monopoly on his creations -- against, in this case, his actual heirs. They need the appeal to Kirby's rights to win the broader public debate, and need to squash that same appeal to win the narrow legal one.

The myth that wealth is earned is necessary to make us think that the financial windfall is significantly due to Kirby's talent in the first place, and that this fight over a lottery ticket is a fight over who really deserves it -- blinding us to the real answer, no one.

7)

Artists can't threaten to withhold their next breakthrough character from big companies if they're not fairly compensated, because they have almost no say in whether they can create one. They put their effort and talent into what they make; but what makes it valuable is fashion, and the efforts of others, and luck, and a host of other factors.

Companies have extended copyright based on a myth of the individual creator -- who they are trying to screw over at every other moment so as to make money for themselves.

Of course artists should be fairly compensated for their work -- and there is, as I have said, a very strong pragmatic argument for copyright, one I don't disagree with (assuming that said copyright is, as provided by the U.S. constitution, "for limited terms"). But the vast wealth at stake here is irrelevant to that right, since it is all-but-irrelevant to that success.

And of course companies should be able to get funding to make (say) movies, and then profit from those endeavors. But they want more than that; they want to maintain a public monopoly on the ability to tell stories about certain characters who, for whatever reason, have caught the public's imagination, so that not only can they make and profit from stories about their characters, but so that they can ensure that theirs are the only stories about those characters that are there to be told.

8)

Since I'm not a lawyer or policymaker, but simply a citizen with opinions on public policy, I can say that I support neither Kirby's heirs nor DC/Marvel. I think that, 56 years after their creation, all works should be in the public domain. The supreme court, alas, disagrees -- which seems to mean little more than their unwillingness to open the can of worms of recognizing that our current Congressional system is so poisoned by legalized bribery that no judgments of Congress (or the President, or really the Courts) can be understood as representing the public interest save incidentally. They said it was Congress's call to make -- which would have been a reasonable argument if Congress wasn't bought and paid for by the stakeholders on one side of this particular issue.

But the Congress was bought and paid for, and the Court was unwilling to enforce the rights of the public. So what we are left with is a debate over who should get to steal from the public the winnings of a lottery.

9)

To anyone not convinced by all of the above:

I have one more argument for my position. It's a knock-down, irrefutable, overwhelming argument, such that if you heard it you could not even begin to imagine disagreeing with me. It would, in fact, revolutionize your thinking on every aspect of this issue.

But since this set of concepts can, as it happens, only be expressed in metaphorical terms as an X-Men story, I'm not legally allowed to share it with you until the X-Men go into the public domain.

* Incidentally, the consequence of this argument isn't necessarily a socialist economy, which I wouldn't actually favor; there are extremely strong pragmatic grounds for favoring the retention of a capitalist system and, as part of that, a robust set of property rights. It's just that such a system should be supplemented by a far stronger redistributory state (in a tax-for-social-goods-sense) than is true of the U.S. today; and also (and this is almost as important) that the public culture and debate should recognize the preponderance of luck in the outcomes of economic lives.

** What a vile phrase.

*** Although in fact I think that Wolverine's blockbuster status has far more to do with Chris Claremont, and to a slightly lesser extent Frank Miller, than it does Herb Trimpe or Wolverine's creators -- although Claremont and Miller have even less legal claim than do Wolverine's originators.

**** Except the bible, of course, which wanted everything reset to zero every fifty years to ensure justice (Leviticus 25:13). What socialist commie pinko wrote that, eh?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Baucus is the cornerstone of the Republican plan to destroy not only the chance for Universal Healthcare, but even its reputation, by, as Atrios aptly summarized it, "'point[ing] out that the bad ungenerous bill they encouraged Dems to put forward is, in fact, a bad ungenerous bill."

Pretend to negotiate, turn the bill into a piece of crap, and then turn around and say it's a piece of crap -- quite a strategy. But it wouldn't have worked without the help of destructive idiots like Baucus.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

The process of artistic growth -- particular an increase in sheer technical skill -- is at odds with the desire for consistency in style and surface across an artistic work.

For shorter works, obviously, this is less of an issue -- one of the many reasons beginning writers are encouraged to write short stories. You learn a bit, finish a piece, and apply what you've learned to the next. In the idealization (almost certainly rarely if ever achieved in real life, like the straight line through the vaguely-linear scattershot of data points), each story is better than the next.

But for a longer work -- the kind that takes years to create -- it's more difficult. Here, if you get better -- and again, I'm thinking primarily of sheer technical skill here -- you get the odd situation where the ending is better done than the beginning. Oh, you can go and rewrite the beginning... but it's time-consuming, and it's a process that lends itself to indefinite extension (although the point of diminishing returns surely kicks in somewhere). Sure, if you've done a lot of shorter works first this is probably less of an issue (although I suspect that artists rarely work so long on a short scale that it's not an issue at all when they turn at last to the long). But what if you are drawn to longer works, for whatever reason? Then it's a bit of a dilemma -- or at least a problem.

Limbaugh and the death panel lies and so on are just an aside in this piece -- as, for that matter, are most of the Republicans. Taibbi focuses on Democratic incompetence and succumbing to bribery have gotten them in the position of most likely doing the worst possible thing -- pushing a bad series of harmful proposals that will be called reform (so they can say they did something) which actually make the situation worse. And since facts on the ground do matter, Republicans will be ableto run against it and win. As Taibbi says near his conclusion:

All that's left of health care reform is a collection of piece-of-shit, weakling proposals that are preposterously expensive and contain almost nothing meaningful — and that set of proposals, meanwhile, is being negotiated down even further by the endlessly negating Group of Six. It is a fight to the finish now between Really Bad and Even Worse. And it's virtually guaranteed to sour the public on reform efforts for years to come.... "It's going to give universal health care a bad name."

-- which, for the insurance industry executives who have done so much to get us where we are now, may have been a big part of the point.

John Nichols has a nice little piece of wishful thinking up about how it's not too late, but it's about as convincing as, well, the idea that any piece of reform strongly supported by insurance companies will do any good.

My guess (and I'll try to write this up in fuller form if I can find time (don't hold your breath)) is that Obama's chance of being a great president was blown in the first few months of his administration, when he spectacularly failed at seizing a unique cultural moment in which a host of coincidental factors (the utter collapse of the Bush presidency and the consequent exposure of conservatism's consequences, Obama's own political talents and inspired campaign, and the terrible shape of the country on the day he took office which cried out for real reform) gave the opening to make a strong case for liberalism of a type not seen since the heyday of the Great Society. If he had seized that moment -- and I think use of the bully pulpit would have been the key move here (which he frittered away on bipartisanship with the minions of Rush Limbaugh (!)) -- he could have done something deep and transformational for this country -- and been a great president.

He blew that. Maybe he'll get another chance -- some crisis or issue which he could handle well -- but I think the odds are he let the great president train leave the station without boarding.

Perhaps we'll find out tonight whether or not Obama is going to piss away his chance at being a good president. At the moment, I'm guessing the odds are high.

But who knows. Say what you will about him, the man can give a speech. Maybe he'll pull it off.

Still, as Taibbi says, the health care reform effort has "amounted to a referendum on whether or not we actually have a functioning government." He ain't optimistic -- but I fear he's right.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Our move toward physician-assisted suicide springs from the same quest for mastery over mortality that leads us to spend nearly twice as much on health care as any other developed nation.

His column isn't about health care primarily, it's about physician assisted suicide, but the staggering dishonesty in this sentence is hard to get passed. (And in truth, I suspect people are more swayed by casual and implied deceits than by direct ones -- far more effective to lie as Douthat does here, in passing, and by assuming the falsehood you wish your readers to swallow.)

The notion that we "spend nearly twice as much on health care as any other developed nation" out of a "quest for mastery over mortality" is so ludicrous, so dishonest that it's hard to know where to start. Maybe with this: it's flat-out false. We don't spend that much for that reason, since we actually achieve less "mastery over mortality" -- that is, we live worse and die younger -- than in countries with better health care systems. Or, at the very least, if you want to claim that we're doing it for that reason, you have to recognize that we're achieving the opposite of what we're aiming for. But we spend twice as much... and get worse results, because health care works better with one of the universal systems that all other industrial countries have.

Douthat implies that we spend twice as much to get better results -- but that's not true, and he has to know it: we spend twice as much to get worse results. We won't change because of vested interests in the status quo, that are willing to let vast numbers of citizens go uninsured (how much mastery over mortality do they have?) and the rest get bad quality insurance, rather than give up some profits. But his claim makes no sense without the implication -- again, the false implication that he must know to be false -- that we spend twice as much and that's a good thing, we get better results. If he acknowledged that we spend twice as much for a crappy health care system -- certainly compared to countries with good ones like France and Germany, although apparently we even get worse results (by which I mean: less mastery over mortality, i.e. people die younger) than countries with weaker ones like Canada and England -- then his sentence would make no sense.

So he's just lying.

Douthat's claim is not only mendacious but pernicious, spreading lies about why we have a bad system which are themselves part of why we have a bad system. We don't spend too much out of some supposed "quest for mastery over mortality" (a bit of Douthat's cultural conservatism that, rather than any respect for truth, caused him to write such nonsense), but because conservatives have been demagoging health care systems that are not only cheaper but also better than the U.S. system for decades (e.g. single payer). We spend twice as much because conservatives have, since Harry Truman's day, spread lies and deceit about the nature of government-paid-for health care. Lies and deceit such as they spread when they opposed Medicare -- pretty much the precise same lies and deceit that they are using now to attempt to derail Obama's (pretty half-assed at best from a liberal point of view, but better than nothing) health care initiative.

Lies and deceit like those Douthat is now spreading in the New York Times.

He probably phrased this lie in such a way as to make it fly under the radar of a factual correction -- he can always claim that it's a matter of opinion (itself false) -- but he is spreading lies here. His own deceit, and those of his ideological fellow-travelers, are in fact the factual situation which he claims to explain -- why we spend twice as much.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

The graphic novel of the year, of course, is David Mazzucchelli’sAsterios Polyp. This isn't my judgment, since I haven't read it yet (for the usual reason), but I have a copy and am looking forward to doing so, since I preordered it as soon as I heard about it -- basically, they had me at "Mazzucchelli". (I'm a fan of his from way back.) But everyoneelseseemstothinkit'sthegraphic novel of the year, and I bet they're right.* I'm looking forward to this one -- one reason I haven't read it yet is I want to find the time and space to do it properly. (Which means it might be years, I suppose, until I get to it...)

Now, I'm not quite as unmitigated a Crumb fan as I am a Mazzucchelli fan. I'm certainly convinced that Crumb is a brilliant draftsman, with a fine eye for social detail. But I'm not sure he's the best writer ever. As I've said before, my favorite Crumb comics are those where he's working from other people's works -- his collaborations with writer Harvey Pekar, his adaptations of Kafka and others, and so forth, plus little oddities like his 8-page piece on Philip K Dick, and of course his short history of America. Because in general, his more characteristic fare leaves me somewhat cold (however well drawn).

But it seems to me like adapting Genesis is the task that Crumb was born for. First, it's an adaptation, someone else's words (I believe that he is incorporating the entire text -- based on but not strictly adherent to Robert Alter's translation -- into his work), which as I said are the places where I think that Crumb really shines. While Bible adaptations might have, at first blush, an awkward air of the classics illustrated, stories-for-kids to it, this isn't necessarily so at all: there have been absolutely brilliant comics adaptations of biblical books published recently, and I'm sure Crumb will do as good a job (albeit in an entirely different way). And of course Crumb isn't going to pretty up the stories the way that children's adaptations' do; on the contrary, I think it's central to Crumb's project that putting the often violent, often sexual (often in a disturbing way) words of Genesis into images force us to confront their meaning in ways that we can avoid when reading all-too-familiar words. As Jeet Heer writes in his piece on the book:

As he did in earlier adaptations, [Crumb] embraces a volatile, often abrasive text soaked through with lust and blood.... The completeness of this version is important, because, as Crumb rightly complains, every other comics adaptation seems to have been streamlined and modernized, often to make the shocking old stories palatable to readers, especially kids.... Unlike these bowdlerized versions, Crumb’s doesn’t hide the fact that the holy book is filled with stories of incest (Abraham marrying his half sister, Sarah; Lot being seduced by his daughter), frenzied bloodlust (God’s various acts of mass murder, the terrible slaughter of a village after a young boy seduces Jacob’s daughter, Dinah), and general unsavory behavior (the theme of fraternal violence that runs from the story of Cain and Abel to the concluding saga of Joseph and his spiteful siblings). Images can cut deeper than words, especially when those images are executed by so psychologically alert an artist as Crumb. It’s one thing to read about the daughters of Lot seducing their father in a desperate attempt to repopulate their tribe after the destruction of Sodom; it’s quite another to see Crumb’s depiction of the sodden Lot, his eyes in a daze, straddled by a zaftig Amazon who looks vaguely troubled by her reproductive mission.

So like Asterios Polyp, I expect this one to be great.

But I have a bit more to go on here. Reading excerpts from an independent fictional architecture like Mazzucchelli's graphic novel can give you a sense of the style, but not much more: it's a narrative whole that needs to be confronted as such, and an unfamiliar narrative that one needs to encounter on its own terms. A biblical adaptation, on the other hand -- while doubtless having ongoing themes and an overarching artistic coherence that adds much to the work when read in its entirety -- is easier to read in bits and pieces. The original text is episodic; for a great many of us, the stories are deeply familiar, so that we can mentally place them in context without much trouble -- in fact, many of us are used to reading the text in bits and pieces anyway. And so on.

But if you read French, there's a lot more online -- and this requires a fairly low-level knowledge of the language, at least for those who are familiar with the original text (normally I'd need a dictionary and a fair amount of time to read a text like this, at least well; but here, with the English text so familiar, it is quite easy to read quickly without any assistance.) A French journal, Télérama, is publishing a bunch of large chunks of it. (via) So you can go ahead and check out Crumb's versions of the stories of Adam and Eve, The Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, the Binding of Isaac and several others. It's great stuff; check out this page from the destruction of Sodom:

It's a great time for the graphic novel. And Crumb's Genesis, like (if reputation is anything to go by) Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, are two of the reasons for it.

Update: I've now read Asterios Polyp. I may try to write up my thoughts later -- hopefully after another reading (or two) -- but the brief version is: it's fabulous. If you're reading it -- no, if you're rereading it, too much distraction (& possible spoilers) for a first reading -- check out these annotations (via, which links to a lot of other resources too.)

Saturday, September 05, 2009

And what his chiefe end was of creating woman to be joynd with man, his own instituting words declare, and are infallible to informe us what is mariage, and what is no mariage: unlesse we can think them set there to no purpose: It is not good, saith he, that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. From which words so plain, lesse cannot be concluded, nor is by any learned Interpreter, then that in Gods intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and the noblest end of mariage.

Friday, September 04, 2009

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Nintendo, starving hysterical naked,dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night...